Adding Password Verification on Single Mode in Fedora Core 5

When you enter the single mode in Fedora Core 5, you can get the root prompt "#" without using the root password. We can add a line below into "/etc/inittab" to avoid this issue.

~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin

Be Careful with Cleaning Windows Files

I have installed MS Office XP in my laptop. Because of lack of HD capacity, I searched for some files which are larger than 10MB. There is a 56MB file "1e16a6.msp" in C:\Windows\installer, and I got rid of it. However, when I am going to reconfig or uninstall MS office XP, there is a warning sign, and the uninstall process stopped. I was confused with that.

How can I uninstall this product from my computer? After I have checked the uninstall log file, I found there are some hints in the log. The reason is that the uninstall program relies on the file "1e16a6.msp" in C:\Windows\installer or some temporary files in the temp directory. Then I had to find a "1e16a6.msp" in the package files of MS Office. Microsoft knowledge base tells us there is a way using "windows install" v3.1 to extract a file from the package. After extracting the file to the C:\Windows\installer, the uninstall program works again.

Windows does not have a clear package manager, so we don't know where the files will be installed. Cleaning disk is complex job; once you make a mistake, it maybe crash the program and even damage the system.

Linux distributions have good package managers such as rpm and deb, so the users can easily know which file is provided by what package, and what's the function by the package . With these efficient tools, deploying the systems is just a breeze.

Two Bugs in StarDict within Ubuntu 5.10

Ubuntu 5.10 consists of StarDict-2.4.3, the very useful dictionary. I found there are two bugs in that version:

1. When you first double click (or select) on a word, a floating window pops up; however, nothing appears when you double click the same word again.

2. After you have installed tree dictionary, you can find that the tree dictionary doesn't work. The reason is that there is a mistake in the StarDict package. The package includes a wrong directory "/usr/share/stardict/treedic" instead of "/usr/share/stardict/treedict".

Ignore the Swap Size Requirement of Oracle-10gXE

There was an error "Swap is less than the minimal requirement of 974MB" when I installed oracle-10gXE in my laptop (512MB RAM, Fedora Core 4); then the installation stopped. Because of a laptop I only assigned a 512MB swap area. How can I install oracle-10gXE in my laptop without changing the swap? Analyzing the installation script, I found it uses "free -m | grep Swap" to get the swap area size. How about cheating it? ;) Let's try below:

# free -m > /tmp/swap.txt
modify the swap size in swap.txt to 1000.
# vi free

#! /bin/sh
if [ $1 = "-m" ]; then
cat /tmp/swap.txt
fi

# chmod +x free
# mv /usr/bin/free /usr/bin/free.save
# cp free /usr/bin/free

Then installed oracle-10g again, it passed. After configuring it worked on my laptop.

Please don't forget to restore the /usr/bin/free after the installation finished.

Netgear WG511 v2 wireless card under Linux

It requires ndiswrapper.
Download ndiswrapper 1.10, ungzip to /usr/src, make->install->ndiswrapper->modprobe-> iwconfig->dhclient, it works!

Note:
1. In Ubuntu 5.10, you must have build-essential, fakeroot installed, then "make deb" to generate two deb packages.
2. In Fedora Core 4, you can "make rpm" to generate two rpm packages.
3. If your wireless network use WEP authentication, you have to get your passphrase key in hex digits. I found "key s:" option of iwconfig doesn't work ;)

Using FCITX in en locale environment

FCITX relies on zh_CN locale. If you want use it in an en locale environment, try this way below:

$ LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8 XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx fcitx
$ LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8 gedit

Then you can input Chinese in an English system.
This method works with Ubuntu 5.10, it might works with other distros.

Enabling IIIMF Input System in Fedora Core 4

I found IIIMF cannot work when I have installed Fedora Core 4 in default way. According to Fedora IIIMF FAQ, I checked if service was running.

$ /sbin/service iiim status
iiimd (pid 2012) is running...

but when pressing "ctrl+space" in "gedit", no any response. What's wrong?

$ rpm -qa iiim*
iiimf-le-xcin-0.1.10-1
iiimf-le-chinput-0.3-19
iiimf-server-12.2-4.fc4.2
iiimf-server-12.2-4
iiimf-libs-12.2-4.fc4.2

Lacking of some packages, so "yum install" these packages below:
iiimf-gtk-12.2-4.fc4.2
iiimf-gnome-im-switcher-12.2-4.fc4.2
iiimf-docs-12.2-4.fc4.2

Add "InputMethod Switcher" to the panel, then launch "gedit" and click on the switcher or press "ctrl+space", it works now!

Note: IIIMF is related to the locales. If you want to enable IIIMF for other locales, do as FAQ describes.

'Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is required for WordPress.'

The problem is in the "wp-settings.php":

if ( !extension_loaded('mysql') )
die( 'Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL which is required for WordPress.' );

So, this issue can be solved:

1. Make sure you have libapache2-mod-php4 installed;
2. Edit /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini, uncomment ";extension=mysql.so";
3. Restart Apache server;
4. Try to reload http://BlogServer/wp-admin/install.php in the browser, it is ok now!

An Excellent 3-column CSS Layout

An Excellent 3-column CSS LAYOUT TECHNIQUE:

the holy grail

KISS principle

The KISS principle today is often used by software developers, meaning the software should be designed in the simplest way, avoiding creeping featurism. More particularly, it is a leading principle in designing critical low-level routines of operating system kernels (at least for Linux), where it suggests to write the code in the most simple and self-explaining manner, to avoid errors (or make it easy to find them). Some suggest that UNIX was invented by following the KISS principle.

Engineers also use the KISS principle, since the simplest solution is usually the best solution to engineering challenges.

Expcerpting from Wikipedia.